Enver Hoxha Had a Moustache on his Chin

I once was a young man (honest!) and a bit of a leftie living in London. Sometimes I’d be the bloke at Stratford shopping centre screaming ‘Troops out’ at folk and attempting to punt the Socialist Worker. This was until it slowly dawned on me that I was the only one involved that could even remotely be described as ‘working class’. One day the local organiser, a trendy looking young white buck who had grown dreadlocks through sheer force of will, turned up in an MG sports-car on Stratford Broadway and threw out a bundle of the latest edition for his minions to monetise. And everyone seemed to be called Simon, even some of the women.

What they all had in common, though, was the total and complete absence of any sense of humour whatsoever.

“Nothing’s funny about the class struggle, Dave!”

Indeed, though I think Karl Marx was particularly tickled by fart jokes, comrade, and he had louping piles and was entitled to be a bit sullen at times.

What I could never work out and never dared to ask them for fear of receiving a lecture on class consciousness and alienation was exactly why they wanted to abolish a class system which benefitted them so well? Because, if things started getting a bit iffy and they missed summer teas on the lawn they could simply fuck off back to mummy and daddies in Hampshire.

I had a little fling with one of them once (mind you I think half the courtyard did. She used to practice her yoga naked quite visibly if you took the trouble to watch and positioned yourself correctly) and I don’t think I ever saw her smile let alone laugh. She was Revolutionary Communist Tendency, the real hardcore, some of whom are now formulating policy at Conservative HQ, but the most miserable human I’ve ever met was a willing worker of the Organ of Communist Youth who supported Enver Hoxha’s Albanian-style Communism (mass-murder, sociopathy, weirdness, ancient tractors) and came to visit me every Friday night.

I came to dread these visits – adopting disguises, feigning death – anything to avoid them but he wasn’t the slightest bit put out. He was a somewhat fey-looking, soft-spoken lad who always looked like he was about to cry. He wouldn’t take a drink or share a smile and only ever wanted to talk about Hoxha’s way for the future (more mass-murder, sociopathy, weirdness and old tractors).

Eventually, I moved from that address and a couple of years later went to study and live in Liverpool.

Imagine my shock! One day while walking up Bold Street I saw him at the top on a corner selling Enver’s version of the good news.

You could hear the scream as far as Fazakerley.

 

Holy Shit!

I am a Eucharistic Minister these days for my sins! I have been many other things in my life but these days I am a Eucharistic Minister for the Catholic church here in little Portobello by the sea. Sounds grand but really, it’s just taking Communion to the housebound to save the parish priest from traipsing around every one of them himself which would be a mammoth task for him.

Apart from the holy stuff I like a gab and am genuinely interested in people’s lives. Most are elderly, some have lived through wars, been in politics, have famous relatives or spent their adult lives travelling the world as sailors. There’s always a story to hear and I’m the man who likes to hear it.

Most of my ‘parishioners’ as it were, are rather elderly and one, in particular, is beginning to lose the place a little: early-stage dementia and this can take a little getting used to. This chap, who has sailed to every continent except Antarctica, is further out where the buses don’t run with every passing week.

 One day early on in the Pandemic when we were just learning the rules and being forbidden by the church to visit folk in their homes, I gave this fella – let’s call him C -  a ring to see how he was faring. Not too good, says C, fed up and resorting to repeated viewings of his wife’s funeral (she’d died about three years previously and they’d been devoted to one another).

I decide to take a bag of comedy DVDs around – Hancock’s Half Hour, Porridge, some Ealing comedies, Father Ted, etc. I can’t stand the idea of the poor old chap watching a funeral on repeat. Nowhere in any self-help book you can name does it say, ‘To cheer yourself up, why not get that old funeral vid out’.

I was never to have ownership of these DVDs again.

Poor chap was falling a lot and in and out of hospital, so his relatives decided the safest place for him was a rather upmarket local care home. So, as soon as it’s deemed Covid-safe I proceed to give him Communion there but always with the unholy thought at the back of my mind about the whereabouts of my precious DVDs.

I can’t ask him as this will only confuse him and it may make me look like some DVD carpetbagger out for his own game.

“Where are my DVDs, C?”

“What DVDs I lent you when you kept watching your wife’s funeral”

A look of startled alarm on his face as he is reminded again that his wife is dead.

“Everything OK?” asks a passing careworker. “Why is C crying?”

“He told me my wife is dead and something about his DVDs”

“I can explain”.

So, I can’t even raise the subject. I look around his rather plush little room for any sign of my babies but there is none. Probably they are with his other possessions while they sell his house. I could ask the relatives, but I never get to meet any of them.

The other day I was entertaining a favourite pastime of scouring the local charity shops for books and CDs and that when I see them. Someone has made quite a presentation of them, quite a theme. There in the window of Cancer Research are all my comedy DVDs. I recognise the little nicks and blemishes and, anyway, it would have to be some coincidence for them to be doppelgangers of my originals.

They are priced two and three quid each and there is a dozen of them. Will I buy them back or will have an awkward conversation inside?

“You see those DVDs in your window…? Well, you won't believe this”.

The Robbers

 There’s a nervous excitement when one is involved in a robbery that almost brings back a sense of childhood like you were just about to chap a door then run away.

A light rain fell on dusty old Leyton and he was well aware that Francis Road police station was only a matter of a hundred yards away.

“It’s easy to get in round the back, just jemmy the door and yer away”.

This was John Mooney who’d been a petty thief and in and out of prison since his early teens growing up in the southside of Glasgow. This was his ‘wee job’ out of which would come funds for drug and drink revelry.

O’Hara was keeping ‘the edgy’ while Mooney and one of the McCulloch brothers did the deed.

“Telly’s and that, electrical stuff, easy to punt round the pubs”. Mooney was the Artful Dodger, aye up for a scam like it was an addiction. A cold chill in the late Autumn city air kept O’Hara alert. Where were they? They’d been gone a good ten minutes and the afternoon was turning dark and commuters were emerging from the nearby tube station.

O’Hara thought often about his friendship with these reprobates. It was mainly based on the consumption of alcohol, he had very little in common with them other than that. Mooney, for instance, was far from the sharpest tack in the box. This would be around the time of the Falkland’s nonsense and Mooney got all patriotic about it although it’s anyone’s guess if he had the slightest clue what was going on as he proved one night in The Crown when he’d forced us to discuss the matter.

“Fuckin’ not on, thae fucken Argies. Whit we should dae is fly ower there at night when they’re no’ expectin’ it and bomb the fuck out ae Rio de Janeiro!!”

No geography master, wee John.

Mind you, it wisnae long ago that his auld maw had come down from Glasgow to visit him and got us aw barred out the North Star with her antics.

 

Scots tended to flock together in this here London. “You fae up the road?” and next thing you knew you’d be stoatin’ home together the best o’ mates.

It wis like that with the younger McCulloch. A night out on the bevvy and then back to his wee bedsit with a kerry-oot. There to greet the drunken couplet was the rosy-cheeked Theresa. Well used to her man’s ways – Davy wisnae rough with the drink, it was when she wouldn’t release funds for it he got a bit iffy – she is courteous to the stranger but mibbe didn’t expect to be sharing a bed with him on first introduction.

“I’ll kip on the floor”

“Don’t be daft. Get yersel under the sheets”

Somehow this seemed the natural thing to do and no funny business even implied in jest. Just three working-class individuals ensconced snugly in the one bed. Davy even sought to give his beloved ‘one’ while I pretended to sleep being lulled gently to the real thing by their gentle rocking.

Such is drink and friendship.

And then brother Jack came doon fae up the road. Sober Jack was as nice as pie, affable and friendly, Pished Jack was a different kettle of pickles. And speaking of kettles! Jack and the younger brother, Davy had fights now and again which Davy always won. Davy fought like a bare-assed banditti, a flame-haired Jacobite with bad teeth and a love of war. Once, he headered Jack all the way down the stairs and it’s lucky that drunk men are made of rubber. But Jack just would not give up until finally beaten to near-unconsciousness – one time with the whistling kettle that ended up a mangled mess in the morning and useless for boiling any damn thing.

Used to be that young Scots would visit London and proceed to live up to every stereotype they could. Drinking heavily, fighting and generally carousing before the often-startled eyes of indigenous folk. Jack was a living nightmare when he was bevvied.

“Play yon Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat again,” he’d roar at five in the morning when the rest of the household just wanted to sleep but couldn’t because of this diminutive, carousing Scot still wearing his long black coat like a rider on some ancient Caledonian storm. The more whisky he drank the more he would wake up.

O’Hara and he had blown his week's wages once up the West End and Jack had ended up being questioned by the police as a terrorist suspect while wearing a dentist’s tunic. Neither had the slightest clue where that niche apparel had come from.

In the growing gloaming the two would-be robbers finally returned – empty handed!

“Whit happened,” asks the puzzled a disappointed O’Hara. The one looked at the other until Mooney answered sheepishly.

“Fucken TV repair shoap. Nuthin’ but broken tellies everywhere”

He then produces from his pocket a tiny transistor radio. A ‘trannie’ in the parlance of the times.

“We might get a couple of quid for this!”

O’Hara laughed all the way back to Leytonstone.